The proliferation of smart phones and the rising popularity of tablet-like devices, with their rich multimedia capabilities, have created demands for seamless collaboration between these devices in personal and enterprise networks. Gradually, these devices have been introduced into the workplace creating a diversified mobile client working environment. Seamless collaboration between these devices becomes more difficult especially with the variety of available devices coupled with the differences in operating systems, versions, vendors, and models.
Due to technology limitations and form factor of touch screen mobile and tablet devices, innovative approaches have been employed to minimize the typing required for interactions between the users and the devices. For example, the use of gesturing, speech recognition and drag and drop capabilities, instead of typing in the required information, have become a trend. Being able to collaborate and share information without the need to type in information, such as a destination address, URL or authentication credentials, becomes a necessity rather than a desire for touch screen or small form-factor mobile devices.
Information can be shared and exchanged through different methods such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP or HTTPs) (web session), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), etc. These methods require manual authentication or credentials to be exchanged as part of the collaborative session initiation. Such requirement makes it impractical for the touch-screen devices that are dominantly relied on by drag-and-drop or gesture-based interactions.
Often, participants brought into a conference call on the spot are not briefed of the context of their participation such as the meeting topic or the reason why that participant's presence is required. Guest users also need to have a temporary identification issued or go through a manual device registration process before gaining access to enterprise WiFi® connectivity unless the enterprise has an open WiFi® connectivity without security restriction.
As a further restriction on current systems, mobile users who wish to transfer data from their mobile device to a local machine or device at a visiting enterprise, have to download data which includes transferring data from their enterprise to the mobile device then transfer the data back to the visiting enterprise. This incurs mobile data transfer costs using standard 3G/4G networks. The participant also needs to request WiFi® access subject to the approval from the proper department at the visiting enterprise. Once approval is given, the participant can enter in a service set identifier (SSID), access token and select the proper encryption option, the process being tedious and not guaranteeing instant access.
In conferences, the participant often uses an available whiteboard in the room. A number of issues arise, however. People in the conference call will not be capable of seeing what is being drawn nor can they fully participate. These outside participants are not able to interact and provide their own input. Furthermore, the content is not easily captured for the future and cannot be referenced for follow ups.
Therefore, an extension to a proximity session mobility system and method is needed that facilitates the seamless exchange of media content and interaction between different devices within a network. These, as well as other related advantages, will be described in the present disclosure.